Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premise and cloud deployment options that seamlessly integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. Avaya’s fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.

WebRTC is new, hot, and not terribly well-understood by many. Thankfully, Val Matula, Avaya’s Senior Director of Multimedia Technologies, knows the ins-and-outs, where it came from and where it’s going, and laid it all out in this Q&A as part of our Enterprise Connect content.

Matt Young: I know you spoke at Enterprise Connect last year- how would you compare last year with this year? What are the trends you’re seeing?

Val Matula: Last year, WebRTC was still something that was coming in the browsers; not yet standardized. It was green field, being promoted by Google for sure, but it was mostly just the startups saying, “We can break the chains of tyranny of PBX enterprise companies, where everything will be free and much easier because people will be able to communicate just using their browsers!” That was partially because last year, in a way, it was the newest thing to talk about.

Fast-forward to now. I expect there will certainly be a number of people who may not have a complete picture of it yet, and so begin to say, “Oh, I think I know what it is – it will allow me to communicate off of tablets.” Well, not really. Just Android tablets. “Oh, it will be viable on all browsers.” Except for Internet Explorer, which is what 60% of what the people use.

We’ll end up talking more about things like that. It’ll be a combination of educating them about what’s real and what’s hype; telling them about the products we have that are coming out very shortly this year that will allow them to use the technology in their enterprises.

MY: Is there an opportunity to learn from the chatter about the features people would like to see?

VM: Absolutely! And that’s one of the best parts of my job! People will come to me and (if they’re honest) they’ll say, “This sounds like a dumb idea; like something you wouldn’t do,” and I’ll say, “Well, let’s just talk about it. You may be onto something that, frankly, would be very powerful.”
What I more often get is someone feeding me the hype of a different company. It’s a great way to find out what the rest of the industry is saying and figure out how we’re going to address that in the marketing and with products.

MY: A little while ago, you were talking about the platform for WebRTC.

VM: Yeah. So if you step back… When we had HTML 4, engineers would get together; IETF, W3C; and they said, “What should we do with the next release?” They called it HTML 5, and they said, “We want to do most of the things that Flash can do,” which is great graphics, programmability, and live, two-way streaming of voice and video.

When they dug into it, they realized that defining programmability and great visuals? No problem there. With the voice and videos, it was easy to specify the mechanical things. They found themselves slowing down on what codec to use, how they should stream the media and what the signaling should be. They broke that off of the original, all-encompassing HTML 5, and they made that WebRTC.

So WebRTC and HTML 5 go hand-in-hand. Therefore, when you look at it, many of the companies, including Apple, are integrating aspects of HTML 5 – the web-programming language – but they’re not picking up the real-time communications part.

WebRTC is designed to go browser-to-browser with no server in the middle. And that’s another reason why there’s some difficulty in translating over.

MY: So the more direct nature of the communication has an effect on latency?

VM: In some sense, that deals with the issues of latency. Essentially, the more you can get servers out of the equation, the less latency there’s going to be. This is why the cleanest, fastest, screamingest audio/video you’re going see on the Internet is when you walk into some demo lab and see two laptops next to each other using WebRTC between them, because basically the signals are only going 10 inches across the table. Anything else is going to take longer, so WebRTC can definitely remove latency from the communications path.

MY: How does WebRTC fit between a customer and a call center, where there are different needs and priorities on each end?

VM: The customer might use WebRTC to get up into a call center, but then we’re gonna still use the servers. They might use WebRTC to deliver the media, but we’re still going to bring them though servers, so we can route the call, do reports, record, escalate to a supervisor – all the things we normally have had. They’re not “shackles of tyranny,” they’re simply what our enterprise customers have said, “Please build this for us! We need this to be efficient as we serve customers!”

WebRTC doesn’t change that so much as when you need a human agent, you really need a human agent. You’ve still got to find the right one, the best one, and report on it, and so on. So we think there are a lot of reasons, especially in the context of customer service, where WebRTC is the onramp, but then you’re going to use the tools that are already there to go the rest of the distance and find the right agent.

VM: Good question. Typically, we’ve been formulating our discussion into three parts: “onramp,” “off ramp,” and “built right in.”

Think of the onramp situation first, where I’m the customer. I’m on a website; I’m dealing with someone and I want to talk to somebody. I can text chat with them today, or I can call them on the phone. What I’d like to be able to do is text chat with them today, or click and take that voice channel and add a voice-and-video channel right to the same agent using WebRTC.

I don’t need an extension; I don’t need to register a switch – I don’t even need a password. We already know what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to onramp into the business!

The other side is the off ramp. The agent wants to sign into the call center, sign in with their login, be prepped and put themselves “available for next call,” but they want to do it with a browser instead of downloading a client because they’re offshore or they work at home.

They don’t want to download software. That’s the off ramp. You do want to register; you want to transfer calls, take calls, push calls, voice, or voice-and-video. If you think about it, it’s harder to do than just a simple on ramp, but that’s the second way we see thin clients being used.

The third way is “baked right in.” If I’m on WebRTC and I want to join a conference call, I could come up in, on ramp into the enterprise, turn in to a SIP call and then have the call go into the bridge. But why? I could just have the bridge do RTC natively and browse right to the bridge and be done with it. And so putting it right into the bridge, from the consumer’s perspective, doesn’t look any different.

From the IT perspective, I took a whole bunch of servers out of the middle that might turn it into SIP and then send it into the bridge, and have the bridge talk about it.

MY: So, what’s your message for Enterprise Connect? What value are we bringing to our customers?

VM: Basically, my message is: If you’re in the “trust business” – and I mean trust with respect to health or money, where people have vested personal interest, that’s where you can do a better job of serving by building up a relationship between the agent and the consumer before you move on to “true business.” And that’s where video really helps.

When I’m talking to somebody, do I think I’m getting a straight answer, because I’m going to make life-related decisions around it, either about retirement planning, savings, loans, mortgages, health plans, life coaching – that sort of thing.

When people hear “medical,” they often jump to, “Oh, let me talk to a doctor.” That’s not what we spend most of our time on. We spend most of our time talking to nurses based on whether there’s too much sugar in cough medicine for diabetics.

It’s the lower-level stuff where I don’t know if I’m talking to an expert. You have a lot of calls where you don’t know if they’re reading off of a script or if they really know what they’re talking about to where you can trust them or double-check the advice you’re getting. That’s where video can really help.MY: What would you like to see happen over the next few years?

VM: I’d like to see people move from talking about call centers to across-the-counter customer service. With video, people say, “I can’t do a call center! Have you been to my call center? It’s just cubes! People are wandering around in jeans and tee shirts!” When I go to the airport or a bank, I see lighting, branding and people wearing the company logo polo.

When you’re projecting an across-the-counter/across-the-desk experience, instead of a call center’s nameless/faceless experience, lighting, branding and formal wear become important.

The good news is, it’s not very expensive to do that. For fifty bucks, you can put a drape behind somebody, put some desk lamps out and put a polo shirt on the person and you’re ready to go! They need to pay attention to that detail.

MY: I think that can also help people to feel more “on” and have that subconscious accountability that they’re doing something important.

VM: Yes. And you know what? You just struck on something that we haven’t talked about in a long time. It brings an air of professionalism to the agent. Not just to the projected image. You really do feel more “on,” if you would. We’ll definitely talk about that – that’s a good point.

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We’re Doubling Down on the Cloud-Based Contact Center with Google

Nearly every business, no matter its size, has some mechanism in place to engage with their customers. For the world’s smallest companies, that’s usually a voicemail number or email address that one person responds to in their spare time.

In contrast, the world’s biggest companies deploy sophisticated, multimillion-dollar systems capable of efficiently processing hundreds of thousands of customer interactions per hour, using tens of thousands of customer engagement agents working 24/7.

But what about the millions of entrepreneurs who find themselves between these two poles?

Companies that are ready to improve their customer engagement, but aren’t ready for a big upfront investment, are increasingly looking to cloud-based, subscription services first.

I want to take a closer look at some of the new features we’ve been hard at work on, and why they’re so exciting.

This new solution provides low-cost agent setup, and allows agents to work from anywhere, right in the browser.

Imagine opening up your Chromebook and logging into the Customer Engagement OnAvayaTM Powered by Google Cloud Platform app with a simple username and password. No VPN required.

We do this by using HTTPS to establish a secure connection between the app and Avaya Secure Border Controller Element, software that verifies access to the database and routes relevant traffic to and from the app. Interactions inside the app are handled by WebRTC, an emerging Web standard that we’re strong supporters of.

HTTPS opens up a temporary information tunnel between the app and the enterprise, which closes as soon as the agents logs off. Every time you use Gmail, buy something online or check your bank balance from your phone, you’re using HTTPS.

Application-specific access using HTTPS has three major benefits for the enterprise: Simplicity, security and scalability.

First, simplicity. Onboarding a new agent is a snap, and can be done completely remotely. Instead of provisioning a new VPN token and sending the agent a complicated sheet of instructions, they log into a Web app–just as simple as logging into Gmail.

Second, security. VPN opens up a bigger tunnel into the enterprise, essentially placing the entire computer on the network virtually. With HTTPS access, data to and from the enterprise is limited to a single application. Nothing else gets through.

Lastly, scalability. The solution is hosted on Google Cloud Platform, which offers world-class reliability. It’s easy to scale up as your business needs grow, and new features are added automatically as they come online.

All customer data exists in the cloud, so if the agent’s Chromebook gets lost or stolen, your risk as an enterprise is greatly reduced.

The result is a truly virtual customer engagement solution, perfect for companies looking for a subscription-based cloud software model.

Customer Engagement OnAvayaTM Powered by Google Cloud Platform is widely available in the U.S. through certified Avaya business partners and Google for Work services partners.

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Spring into the Avaya Technology Forum

It’s that time of year, again. The Avaya Technology Forum (ATF) is once more upon us.Despite the added workload and dizzying deadlines, it really is my favorite time of year at work.It’s like the Avaya version of Spring.

As seasons go, Spring stands out as a New & Improved version.The grass is green, again.My wife is out tending to all of her blooming plants and flowers.The kids are racing around on their bikes and scooters getting reacquainted with playing outside and burning off months of pent up energy.And I get to enjoy the view over the top of my computer screen, while trying to focus on conference calls instead of the little frolicking fawns in my backyard.

In the same manner, ATF is full of new life and energy.The demo floor is filled with passionate partners and curious customers.The engineers are busily attending to new products and solutions.Some of the brightest minds at Avaya are bouncing around from demos to whiteboards and all in between passionately listening to the challenges of different businesses and collaborating on the best ways to address them through technology.And I get to soak it all in throughout a whirlwind of activities, while trying not to be late for my own sessions as I’m caught up in the energy of the conversations.

While ATF is a fantastic event for corporate folks like me to engage and stay in touch with partners and customers and validate priorities for development, it’s ultimately an event for you.ATF is focused on helping you make the most informed decisions possible about migrating, designing and implementing the right networking, customer engagement, unified communications and engagement architecture for your enterprise. It’s the only place you’ll find all the experts from Avaya in 1 place at 1 time, and their sole purpose is to showcase the latest innovations and provide the latest information to you through 3 days of planned sessions, scheduled meetings, demos and casual hallway conversations.We’ll be introducing new products, making strategic announcements and providing full access to the roadmap, and you’ll be right there to hear it first and pose your questions to the people behind it all.It’s the ultimate inside track.

Of course, you can hear about it from the comfort of home…or your office if you prefer.The coolest thing about ATF is all the technology on display.We don’t just talk about it.We actually show it.On the demo floor, you’ll see existing equipment, as well as, the equipment that’s becoming generally available around the time of ATF.You can get an overview of the setup from experts tending the demo and even get a firsthand view under the covers at the keyboard.It gets better than that, though.You’ll get the same experience with some of our strategic technology that’s still under development for release later this year.The only way you’ll get any closer to the future of Avaya is to come join our team at ATF 2015, at the Buena Vista Palace Orlando, FL, from February 24 -26, 2015.

So, as you can tell, I’m quite excited…and I hope you are, too.Why wait for Mother Nature?Come celebrate the Spring of technology with Avaya, and don’t forget to say, “hi.”I’ll be easy to find.Just listen for the loud Texas drawl bouncing around from conversation to conversation.Once you find it, you’ll find me starry eyed, like a kid in a candy shop.I can’t wait!

Avaya Helps Track Santa This Christmas Eve, and Brings Military Families Together

Engagement is in our DNA. It’s in the way our teams communicate and collaborate. It’s in our vision for how customers and businesses will interact. It’s about bringing people together to forge deep, meaningful connections.

This year, engagement extends to the holiday season in a very special way. As we’ve done in years past, Avaya will help bring families closer to Santa, powering the contact center at NORAD where nearly 1,250 volunteers will answer calls and emails from kids inquiring about Santa’s whereabouts on Christmas Eve. Each year, the NORAD Tracks Santa team relies on the power of Avaya technology to make sure they can connect with children calling in from around the world.

The NORAD Santa tracker helps to connect kids with Santa’s helpers on Christmas Eve. It also reminds us that there are those who can’t make phone calls as easily as we can. Military servicemembers deployed overseas during the holiday season see the simple act of a phone call home to their loved ones as the best gift they could receive.

In an effort to help bring those families closer together, Avaya is supporting #SantaCause, making a donation to Cell Phones For Soldiers. This nonprofit organization–started by two kids who emptied their piggy banks to purchase phone cards for our military stationed abroad–has now donated more than 210 million minutes of talk time to troops and their families to make phone calls a possibility. We’re proud to be associated with Cell Phones For Soldiers and their incredible efforts to connect families all year long.

We would like to encourage you–our friends and partners–to join us in our effort to make the most important connections a reality this season. We’d like to also say thank you to our friends at @Plantronics for their generous donation.

Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premise and cloud deployment options that seamlessly integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. Avaya’s fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.